The reshuffle reactions were wrong. Far from being pointless, the changes to Keir Starmer’s Cabinet all serve a purpose — and none more so than Shabana Mahmood’s promotion to Home Secretary.

To have a hope of saving Labour from defeat by Reform UK, Starmer knows that his government has to stop the boats and close the migrant hotels. Whatever progress Yvette Cooper was making on these fronts wasn’t visible, so she’s been moved upstairs to the Foreign Office to make room for a harder line under Mahmood.

Weekend press reports — clearly briefed out by Downing Street — suggest that migrants will be diverted from hotel accommodation into prefabricated units on land owned by the Ministry of Defence. There’s also talk of seeking changes to Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which guarantees the right to private and family life. Back in June, Mahmood gave a speech in which she said that Article 8 “has too often been used in ways that frustrate deportation, even where there are serious concerns about credibility, fairness, and risk to the public”. On top of that, she has also promised to suspend visas for counties which don’t do return deals and go further than Cooper on boats. Finally, there’s the prospect of a new “one-in, one-out” deal, this time with Germany.

So will this package of measures be enough to restore Labour’s fortunes? Extremely unlikely. Shutting down the migrant hotels might have some impact on public opinion, but only if the purpose-built accommodation is both secure and large enough to house tens of thousands. Even then, that would leave hundreds of thousands of unauthorised migrants outside the system — not to mention millions of new legal migrants competing for housing, jobs, and public services.

ECHR reform is another uphill struggle. Amendments to existing rights require unanimous agreement among the 46 member states. Individual states can try to finesse their interpretation in their own courts, but it’s uncertain whether Mahmood will receive the necessary cooperation from either the British judiciary or her Labour colleagues. Significantly, the reshuffle left Lord Hermer — the patron saint of judicial activism — in post as Attorney General.

The one-in, one-out agreements with other countries won’t satisfy the none-in, all-out mood of the Reform-voting electorate. Though Starmer thinks something needs to be done, he still hasn’t grasped the full depth of his party’s predicament. Never mind the shaky Red Wall: it’s now about saving Labour strongholds which haven’t been lost since the Thirties. Even Mahmood’s own seat of Birmingham Ladywood is under threat. When the rupture between the party and its traditional voter base is that fundamental, half-measures and token gestures aren’t enough.

Quitting the ECHR might have done the trick, but that’s been categorically ruled out by the Prime Minister himself. Fortunately for Mahmood there is another model she could follow — one pioneered by Mette Frederiksen, the centre-left Prime Minister of Denmark. From within the ECHR, Frederiksen has taken back control of Denmark’s borders while seeing off the local equivalent to Reform. That said, her success has come at a price: deep divisions on the Danish Left and a coalition of necessity between Frederiksen’s party and some of her previous opponents on the centre-right.

Would Starmer and Mahmood risk similar upheavals in the UK? Perhaps that’s the wrong way to look at it. Bold immigration reform makes political sense not despite the condemnation it would attract from the liberal Left, but because of it. It is only when the open-borders crowd leave Labour that Reform voters might think of coming back.

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Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.

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